Researcher Spotlight: David Carter

David Carter is a Scientia Fellow who works across Law & Justice and the School of Population Health. Their research explores the relationship between law and infectious disease, including blood-borne viruses and the regulation of antimicrobial resistance, while advocating for fair treatment of people living with communicable conditions. David’s passion for partnership-driven research in law is shaped by earlier experience as a health sector executive, and a commitment to critically examining how law influences health services and outcomes by collaborating directly with those most affected.

David is the lead investigator of Health+Law, a partnership with national peak bodies and community-led organisations across the country. Health+Law recently completed data collection with people living with HIV and hepatitis B as part of the first ever large-scale national study of their lived experience of the law. David is a board member at the HIV/AIDS Legal Centre and at the recently established Centre for Sex & Gender Equity in Health & Medicine, is Chair of the Ramsay Health Care Human Research Ethics Committee and a committee member for the Kingsford Legal Centre’s Health Justice Partnership.

What project are you working on that excites you?

I’m currently working with an amazing team of researchers, lawyers, healthcare people, community workers and peers living with blood-borne viruses on the legal needs of people living with HIV and hepatitis B. It’s exciting work, partly because there is so much activity and medical advancement in blood-borne virus public health, but at the same time there are complex and often outdated regulatory regimes and other pockets of neglect. These affect people’s lives and health in ways that are unconscionable, not to mention being terrible for public health goals. It’s encouraging to do work that’s creating some traction in this area. And working intimately with people and leaders from affected communities adds a lot of everyday pleasure (and complexity!) to the work.

What do you hope to achieve with your research/impact and engagement in the next year?

Right now, I’m writing up the results of our national legal needs research with a mixed team of qualitative and quantitative researchers. We have so much data and the findings are fascinating, stark – and also almost endless. So our goal is to be selective, and to produce a set of reports that are useful for policymaking and law reform as well as for people and communities on the ground. Writing for all of those audiences is a huge challenge! I will be so proud if we can create reports that make sense to, and are genuinely useful for, the people working to implement change. Those people have been asking for and waiting patiently for this evidence base for a long time.

What research/impact and engagement achievement are you most proud of and why?

We built a referral pathway (and budget) into our national research so that when participants living with HIV or hepatitis B disclosed a live legal problem our interviewers could offer them a referral for free legal advice and representation from the HIV/AIDS Legal Centre. Almost half of our participants were referred, which is a loud signal of the extent of legal need among members of these communities. It also shows how we can sometimes build that type of direct and immediate impact into the research process itself in quite powerful ways. I’m proud Health+Law has already had that supportive impact for the people we work with.